print editions

After working with fellow indie authors in NIWA for a few years now, I’ve decided that it’s stupid that I don’t have print copies of my books available on Amazon (and by extension, a couple other places that carry books published via CreateSpace/KDP). Some time in the next month or so, I’m going to fix this problem. There are going to be new Faerie Blood and Bone Walker print editions!

The particular motivation here: I’m flat out of copies of Faerie Blood, since I sold my last remaining five copies at Norwescon (yay!). I’m down to only five copies left of Bone Walker as well. These will be the last remaining espresso-book-machine copies of that book!

So if anybody wants ’em, this would be a real good time to get ’em. I bumped the price down to $12 at Norwescon after I sold out of Faerie Blood, and will keep that price until they’re gone. Likewise, I have a couple of copies with misprinted covers, and a couple of damaged ones, available for only $5. (The damaged ones were ones I’d signed and mailed out to Kickstarter backers. But they were damaged by the Post Office in transit and came back to me.)

Since I’m doing whole new print editions, I’ll also do a minor edit pass on both books. Notably, I’ll finally correct that typo in Chapter 20 of Faerie Blood in the name of the demon, Azganaroth! But I’ll fix a few other minor typos as well as I find them. Dara will make any adjustments necessary in the PDF and print masters, including the edition numbering in the books’ front matter pages.

Once I finish the edit passes, I’ll deploy the print PDFs up to Amazon. I’ll be able to get author proof copies and vet them before finally releasing the new editions for sale.

The end result? Hopefully, more discoverability and ease of purchase for people who don’t already know me or follow me on social media. Hopefully nicer covers, too! Once I deal with any hiccups in the process, I’ll deploy print books this way moving forward. I’ll be doing Walk the Wards this way as well.

Now that I’m back from my latest trip to Canada (which went splendidly and the obligatory concert report is on the way), just wanted to get out a quick update on the status of print copies of Faerie Blood and Bone Walker.

I am down to a scant two copies of Faerie Blood, after selling quite a few at Conflikt, and I’ve just sold the latest one today to one of my Kickstarter backers in St. John’s. (HI EMMA!) One of the others is already spoken for for giveaway purposes (more on this in a minute), and that leaves me one that is not currently spoken for.

So if anybody wants that last copy of Faerie Blood, now would be a good time to jump over to the merch page for it on Bandcamp and order it! Because once it’s gone, that’ll be it for a bit until I get my next print run in. Alternately, go to the Buying From Me page for instructions on how to order it from me directly if you don’t want to go through Bandcamp.

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And speaking of print editions: I have a big ol’ shiny new box of Bone Walker! This is the rest of the first print run, a good number of which will be heading out to Kickstarter backers over the next couple of weeks, as well as other folks who have paid me for a copy (HI OLO). One of these will also be reserved for giveaway purposes, and I’ll be handing out a couple via a Goodreads giveaway as well.

But that’ll leave me a whole bunch of other copies that will be available for purchase, even before my next convention–which’ll be Norwescon. So if you want a print copy of this book, you can order that from Bandcamp too, here. Or, again, go look at the Buying From Me page for other options.

BEHOLD THE SHINY! Who wants one? 😀

Box of Bone Walker!

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Now about that first giveaway I mentioned! Long-time friend and supporter of my work David has asked my and Dara’s permission to do a giveaway of both books and the soundtrack on his blog. That giveaway is in progress right over here, so if you’d like to throw your hat into the ring, click on over there and check out his post! Note that he will also be handing out digital copies of both books as a second prize.

All you have to do is drop him a comment telling him why you’d like to be the winner. Creativity and cleverness count!

He’ll be running this giveaway until March 8th, so you have a bit of time. I’ll be issuing periodic reminders until the giveaway is done! So clickie!

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Stand by for further updates re: the Goodreads giveaway I’ll be setting up. AND! One more thing about that new box of books I’ve got–I’ve got a few extras that turned out to be misprints, with slightly screwed up covers. Third Place gave me those as extras since they can’t use them, so I can give them to interested parties as review copies.

So if you’re willing to commit to writing a review of the book on Amazon and/or Goodreads, talk to me and I can set you up with a copy!

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I’ll have two, count ’em, two Boosting the Signal posts coming this week so stand by for those on Friday! One will be from fellow Carina author Caitlin Sinead, and another will be from an author that’s new to me, Sharon Black–but who caught my interest querying me about her romantic comedy set at a newspaper. Check back with me on Friday for those posts! And stand by for next week’s Boosting the Signal for another Carina author, T.D. Wilson, and his latest SF release!

Conflikt proved to be quite delightful in general, but also in particular for selling copies of Faerie Blood and Bone Walker! I sold six of the one and three of the other, and the release concert went quite swimmingly as well. I made piccolo noises on a stage that contained ALL OF THE MEMBERS OF TRICKY PIXIE.

And I played all the notes I needed to play, in the correct order, and at the right times. WIN! I’m here to tell you, too: I am NOT used to performance adrenalin, and for a short while after that show was over, I was shaky!

Also WIN: two people I didn’t know coming up to me to ask me to sign books for them, which was pretty awesome. And mind-blowing, because at least one of those two people was (or so I was informed by well-meaning friends of said person) very shy about approaching me. I am not used to THAT, either!

But now that I’m home, I can return to the business of getting Bone Walker out to you all. Particularly my long-waiting Kickstarter backers, to whom I shall start mailing copies of the print edition this week.

Meanwhile, the ebook goes on official sale TOMORROW. I’m now up into two digits of preorders, so YAY and thanks to all who have preordered so far. I am also moving forward with deploying the book for sale up on barnesandnoble.com, since they don’t do preorders. And since it’ll take a bit for them to actually process the book, I elected to put it up TODAY, so hopefully it’ll be done by tomorrow and Nook owners will be able to scarf the book along with everybody else.

Last but not least: yesterday was my turn to post on the Here Be Magic blog, and I did in fact post about Bone Walker, right over here! I talk some about the magical importance of music in the Warder universe, and I’m looking for comments on what songs are magical to you. I’ll be giving out a print edition of Bone Walker to a randomly selected commenter, so CLICKIE!

Now that the Bone Walker Soundtrack is an actual thing that you can actually buy, Dara has taken the liberty of doing a really awesome thing: she’s set up pages on the Crime and the Forces of Evil Bandcamp page to include both Faerie Blood AND Bone Walker‘s print editions as merch associated with the music. WHICH IT IS.

And what this means for you, O Internets, is that now there is a way to order print copies of these books without having to come directly to me. Even more importantly, it means that all methods of payment Bandcamp accepts are now ways that you can pay for the book–including credit cards as well as Paypal.

You can go straight to the Crime and the Forces of Evil Bandcamp page’s merch section and order the books from there. The page for Faerie Blood is here, and the page for Bone Walker is here!

The official pages for Faerie Blood and Bone Walker have both been updated with this information. Moving forward, this will be the recommended way to order print copies of either of these books, since it provides the most flexibility for how to pay.

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I mention all of the above, by the way, because tonight I got Bone Walker‘s FIRST TEST PRINT, and we’re moving forward with the printing, and so soon I will have COPIES TO SELL YOU ALL. SO EXCITING!

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On a related note, although I’m now able to take orders for the print books via Bandcamp, I will still accept direct requests to buy the books in either ebook or print form.

However, since people keep asking me how to go about paying me for stuff, I have spun off a standalone Buying From Me page on the site that explains what things I can sell directly, what their prices are, and what methods of payment I can personally accept.

Please consider this the canonical reference source for how to order things directly from me. I’ll be updating my FAQ to point to it too.

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And while we’re on the topic of that soundtrack, I have taken the liberty of giving it its very own page here on my site. Because it’s shiny, I’m proud of it, and I wanted to make sure new visitors to my site can find out about it. 😀

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Last and OH MY assuredly NOT THE LEAST:

I have an official cover for Victory of the Hawk! \0/ I’m really excited about this cover, since a) it’s gorgeous, b) it’s dynamic, and c) it is a well and thoroughly proper fantasy novel cover.

Ladies and gentlemen, mesdames et messieurs, I give you Kestar Vaarsen, Knight of the Hawk, and baron of Bremany!

Victory of the Hawk

This cover will be getting added to Victory’s official page, and it’ll be added to the lineup of thumbnails on the homepage too!

Those of you who backed my Kickstarter will have already received this news, but for everybody else:

BONE WALKER HAS GONE TO PRINT! \0/

I am now working with Third Place Press to get the first print run done and dealt with. If all goes well we will hopefully have at least some initial copies to sell at Conflikt this weekend. I’m doing a print run of 100 copies, 44 of which will be going to Kickstarter backers. Of the rest, most will be used for selling at conventions, as well as for contributors’ copies to give to everybody who performed on the soundtrack, or who will be performing at the release concert this weekend.

If you don’t fall into either the “backer” or “contributor” categories and you want a copy of the book, talk to me about getting one. As with Faerie Blood, I have no mechanism in place for placing orders for this book. So if you want one, your options are in order of my preference:

Paypal me to my annathepiper address on gmail.

Credit equivalent to the price of the book on any online store where I can get ebooks. In order of preference that’ll be Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iTunes (US or CA, I have accounts on both), and Amazon.

If you’re local to me, I’ll take cash.

If you’re NOT local to me and can’t Paypal me, you may mail me a check. I do NOT recommend you send cash.

I ask $15 USD as the base price of the book. If I can hand-deliver it to you (i.e., if you’re local to me, if I’ll be seeing you on my next trip to Canada, or if I’m likely to see you at a convention), I’ll waive shipping costs so it’ll be a straight up $15 USD.

If you are NOT local to me and I need to mail you the book, I also ask $3 USD for the cost of shipping within the States (where I can send a book by media mail rates), $6 for the cost of shipping to Canada, or $8 for the cost of shipping outside North America. (Sorry about that, non-North-Americans, but American postal rates are quite stupid right now. *^_^*;;)

If you want to reserve a copy out of the initial print run, then do please make arrangements to pay for a copy if you haven’t already. I will confirm your reserved copy when payment is received. Since my initial print run will have only about 45 copies available and some of those are hopefully going to get sold at Conflikt, I will have only a limited number to sell to folks. So priority will need to be given to people who can reserve a copy via payment.

If you can’t claim one of the initial print run copies, fear not, another print run is likely in the latter half of the year when I prep to go to Worldcon!

MEANWHILE, DON’T FORGET:

The ebook edition of Bone Walker is now up for preorder practically all over the place, including Amazon, Kobo, iTunes, Smashwords, and Google Play! Nook users, it’ll be going up on B&N a week from today, so stand by on that. All the places you can preorder the book are on its official page!

AND, the soundtrack is available in digital form here, where you can also preorder the print CD! We have those CDs in our hands RIGHT NOW, so get ’em while the getting’s good! As with the print run of the books, these are available only in limited quantities, so we’ll be giving priority to people who can reserve copies via payment. Follow the instructions on the Bandcamp page to preorder a CD, or contact me and Dara to set that up!

Item the first: Debut Carina author Sonya Clark would like y’all to know she’s having a giveaway for her forthcoming release Trancehack, which is futuristic paranormal romance. Call it PR with a side helping of SF, if you like! Deets can be found right over here.

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Item the second: speaking of my fellow Carina authors, the awesome Joely Sue Burkhart and Raelyn Barclay are running Coyote Con, a virtual convention, all this month! What’s a virtual convention? It’s a series of online chat discussions on various interesting topics, pretty similar to what you’d find at an actual convention in person.

I’ve been in a few of these panels now myself, and there are more to come as the month progresses! And for those panels you may have already missed, Joely and Raelyn are posting transcripts too, so you can catch up on those here.

There are a couple more panels today, and there’ll be more the remaining weekends of the month. And one chat room’s also dedicated to just general hanging out too! The full schedule is here!

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Item the third: I will be going to Orycon from November 8-10–the weekend right before my forthcoming surgery, in fact. So unless you’re one of the people likely to show up for the annual Murkworks Thanksgiving Day Homeless Waifs Turkeyfest, this is going to be the last chance to spot the elusive Wild Anna outside her natural habitat. If you’re going to be there, find me and say hi, mmkay?

Likewise, I am going to GeekGirlCon this coming weekend, right after I go see Great Big Sea in Edmonds. I’m going to be REAL busy this weekend. 😀

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Item the fourth: This is your friendly reminder that I am down to three print copies of Faerie Blood, so if you’d like a print copy of this book, talk to me! Getting it directly from me remains the only way to acquire it since I currently have no way of selling it online. I ask $15 if I’m going to hand deliver it, $20 if I need to mail it to you.

I also have a small stock of CDs that contain the various formats of the ebook edition, both the original Drollerie release AND the current Second Edition as well. For these, I ask $5 each.

I will have both of these items with me at GeekGirlCon and Orycon as well!

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Item the fifth: Kickstarter backers, just so y’all know, I have totally had my brain eaten by Vengeance of the Hunter edits. I ran behind on it, and am scrambling along with my editor (who is made of solid gold awesomeness, All Hail Her Name) to get the manuscript finished up so that we don’t impact the schedule. We’re in the middle of line edits now. I will be jumping back to Bone Walker the instant we sign off on this book.

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Item the sixth: I have not forgotten the series of posts on advice on self-publishing; these too have had to be paused while I charge through edits on Vengeance. They will resume soon. Thank you for your patience on that; I’ve seen quite a few hits on these posts, so I do want to finish the series up.

Some of you loverly people have been kind enough to report in that you’re quite liking Valor of the Healer, for which I thank you from the bottom of my heart! If the spirit moves you, please consider rating and/or reviewing it somewhere suitably visible. It will help. At the level at which I operate as an author, word of mouth is critical to try to encourage others to boost my sales.

Amazon remains the best and highest visibility place to rate and/or review a book, but Goodreads would be good, too. I haven’t gotten much yet in the way of ratings or reviews at Goodreads, and Amazon has nothing at all.

Also, don’t forget that if ebooks aren’t your thing, Valor IS also available as an audiobook. Ratings and/or reviews on that would also be awesome.

And of course Faerie Blood is still available, and because Valor‘s selling for $2.99 at the moment, I’ve put Faerie Blood at the same price. So now’s a really good time to grab the ebook if you haven’t already. Also, I DO still have a small number of print copies available: seven, to be precise. The only way to get Faerie Blood in print is still to talk to me directly, so if you want one, do let me know. I’ll be happy to mail it to you! The best and fastest way to pay me for a copy remains Paypal.